brat, noun

a disparaging : CHILD specifically : an ill-mannered annoying child, a spoiled brat

b: an ill-mannered immature person

                                                Merriam Webster On-Line Dictionary

the perverts, the perverters of language,

    the perverts, who have set money-lust

Before the pleasures of the senses

                                                Ezra Pound, “Canto XIV”[1]

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Perhaps modeled on Josh Hawley’s raised fist on 6 January as the Senator from Missouri manfully strode past the soon-to-be insurrectionists, Donald Trump has in recent days been photographed clenching and raising his Pinocchio-sized paws in an obscene appropriation of the Black Power salute of the 1960s.[2]

This gesture has replaced the two-thumbs up pose Trump favored in those halcyon days before the confiscation of classified documents he had stolen from the National Archives, those relatively placid days of mere impeachment, Congressional hearings, attempted election overthrowing, and income tax evasion.

I mean, come on. Trump’s ripping off the iconography of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale is sort of like Vladimir Putin twisting his legs into the lotus position and reciting the Sermon on the Mount.

I mean, you raise your fist to defy the Man, not to spur on a latter-day incarnation of the KKK.

Donald Trump and Josh Hawley are the Man, in favor of teargassing peaceful Black protesters.

“Why can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump asked his Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

Not Power to the People but Power to the Elite.

Brat Power, not People Power.

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[1] The irony is not lost on me that I’m quoting a fascist poet here, doing in a lesser sense what I’m accusing Trump and Hawley of doing.

[2] Of course, Hawley’s jogging exit from the capitol during the riot was not, shall we say, the stuff of the traditional Western hero, not the stuff of Hercules – or Andy of Mayberry for that matter.